Act as the emissary of the architecture and own the design authority: Lead the Architecture Review Board (ARB) to ensure technical alignment, compliance, and standardization across the enterprise portfolio.

Define 3Pillar’s AI architecture vision and engineering standards, establishing the patterns and governance frameworks that Solution Architects, Tech Leads, and engineers across the organization follow.

Own the Azure Cloud and Data Standards: Serve as a deep Azure-native expert at the reference-architecture altitude. Define the sanctioned Azure landing-zone, the Fabric data standard, and the sanctioned Azure AI consumption patterns. Design and oversee modern data architectures that fuel AI systems, leveraging Data Lakehouse paradigms and integrating native tools like Microsoft Fabric and Azure SQL to ensure seamless data flows and high-performance querying.

Build the Enterprise Reference Architectures and Reusable Patterns Library: Drive original IP creation by defining and governing concrete, reusable architectural frameworks and internal tooling that increase 3Pillar’s competitive advantage. Make these patterns concrete by establishing multi-tenant isolation for regulated data, PII-segregated AI, and audit/provenance controls for federally-funded work.

Lead Technology-Portfolio and Build-vs-Buy Strategy: Assess the enterprise technology landscape, evaluate vendor solutions, and formulate build-vs-buy decisions for new technology insertion.

Drive Business-Capability Mapping: Partner with appropriate stakeholders to map business capabilities to technology solutions, determine functional and nonfunctional requirements, and define business goals for a set of scenarios.

Govern the delivery of enterprise-grade AI systems: Oversee LLM-powered features, RAG pipelines, agentic frameworks, and model inference infrastructure across complex, multi-team programs at the governance and standards level.

Advise stakeholders at the senior and executive levels on AI strategy, technology investment prioritization, risk posture, and competitive positioning, translating ambition into technically sound, phased roadmaps.

Continuously evaluate the global AI landscape - foundation model developments, emerging frameworks, and regulatory shifts - and brief engineering and business leadership on strategic implications.

Manage risk identification and mitigation strategies for the architecture.

Lead AI risk management at the organizational level: vendor lock-in, data privacy, model drift, adversarial inputs, and compliance with evolving AI regulation (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, GDPR, HIPAA).

Influence and communicate long-term product vision, technical vision, development strategy, and roadmap.

Drive original IP creation: reusable AI architectural frameworks, reference architectures, accelerators, and internal tooling that increase 3Pillar’s competitive advantage across engagements.

Establish and lead 3Pillar’s AI Centre of Excellence - curating architectural patterns, governing responsible AI standards, and publishing guidance consumed across the engineering organization.

Active leader in the Architecture Practice community, mentoring Engineers and others through Communities of Practice (CoPs) or on project teams, supporting the growth of technical capabilities.

Serve as an external thought leader: representing 3Pillar at industry conferences, publishing research and whitepapers, and contributing to open-source projects or standards bodies in the AI domain.

Contribute architectural skills within an Agile team, with no supervision or within a team of architects.

Integrate AI-powered capabilities into DevOps and QA practices - including automated code review, intelligent test generation, and AI-assisted security scanning - to raise the engineering standard across programs.

A Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or a related field.

A minimum of 10-12 years of experience working as an Enterprise Architect or Principal Architect, with profound expertise in designing enterprise-scale solutions.

Deep Azure Fluency: Demonstrated expertise setting standards across the Azure ecosystem, specifically Azure SQL, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure AI.

Deep, demonstrable expertise across the full AI architecture spectrum: LLM integration, agentic systems, RAG at scale, MLOps, AI security, and AI governance.

High level of English proficiency required to interact with a globally-based development team.

Communicate in a clear and understandable manner with stakeholders, and be able to articulate the details of the designed architecture using the appropriate level of technical language.

Natural leader with critical reasoning and good decision making skills.

Have extremely good knowledge on SDLC processes and familiarity with actionable metrics and KPIs.

Operational excellence in design methodologies and architectural patterns across multiple platforms.

Ability to work on multiple parallel projects and utilize time management skills and multitasking capabilities.

Experience leading Agile software development methodologies.

High-level design proficiency following UML / C4 / ArchiMate.

Demonstrate mentorship and thought leadership to engineers and decision-makers throughout the organization.

Demonstrated innovative thinking within teams for problem-solving.

Proven track record of defining and executing AI strategy at an organisational or programme level, with measurable business impact.

Experience advising executive stakeholders on AI investment strategy, risk management, and competitive differentiation.

Preferably Strong command of global AI regulation and policy (e.g. EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, GDPR, HIPAA AI implications) and how they shape enterprise AI architecture decisions.

Preferably Recognised internally and/or externally as an AI technical authority - through published work, conference participation, or significant organisational influence.

Foundational knowledge in Data Analysis/Modelling/Architecture, ETL Dataflows and good understanding of highly scalable distributed and cloud-native data stores.

Experience in designing applications involving more than one technology platform (web, desktop, mobile).

Experience in designing SaaS or highly scalable distributed applications on the cloud.

Financial management experience and ROI calculation.

Proficiency in managing crises effectively while maintaining calmness under pressure.

Solutions Architect certification on major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP, but mainly Azure).

TOGAF Certified.

Original contributions to the AI field: open-source frameworks, published research, novel architectural patterns, or influential whitepapers.

Deep expertise in frontier AI topics: multi-modal architectures, AI safety, model alignment, or sovereign/on-premise AI deployments for regulated industries.

Experience building or scaling an AI practice within a professional services or product organisation.

AI/ML certifications (AWS ML Specialty, Google Professional ML Engineer, Azure AI Engineer) or equivalent demonstrable expertise.

Advisory board membership, keynote speaking, or recognised industry awards in the AI domain.